


hell is for children

by frauleinfunf



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Child Abuse, Domestic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 18:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20086414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frauleinfunf/pseuds/frauleinfunf
Summary: She then kneeled to face Barnaby, gripping his arms but smiling and speaking softly as she said, “Sweetheart, go to your room. Dad and I want to talk privately.”





	hell is for children

**Author's Note:**

> All the British spelling kills me as an American and nobody asked for it and I probably missed some, but damn if I didn't stick with it.

Weekends were usually quieter than weeks at the Lee household. Dad wasn’t angry like he always was after work, and he spent a lot of time fishing at the lake nearby instead of grumbling in the kitchen and drinking his whisky. Mum usually just ignored Dad instead of getting mad at him and getting into fights that usually left her bruised. Barnaby wasn’t given lessons he didn’t understand as Mum tried to figure out how to explain stuff to him. And best of all, he could spend all day playing with the muggle kids down the road.

Mum told him not to tell Dad about that, that he didn’t like muggles. Barnaby asked why, Mum said it was because he thought muggles were dirty. This didn’t make sense to Barnaby, because the muggle kids’ mother made them take baths everyday and wash behind their ears. Mum didn’t have an answer for that, and just told Barnaby not to tell Dad.

Barnaby was never good at lying. Whenever he broke something, the guilt of lying to Mum always made him blurt out the truth not even a minute after saying it wasn’t him. Sometimes, he’d just forget he was supposed to be lying and say something that would rat him out. That’s what happened Dad found out about his muggle friends down the road.

It was Sunday night and Mum was gutting the fish Dad had caught while he sat at the table and read the Daily Prophet. Barnaby sat across from him and was talking all about his day. Dad didn’t ask him about his day, but on weekends Dad didn’t say things like “What the hell makes you think I wanna hear about your damn day? You wanna hear about my day? I made a lock for an old bitch who knows nothing about locksmithing but thought it would be easy to pick!”

Maybe the peace they only had on the weekends made him relax too much and that’s why he rat himself out on accident.

He leaned on the table, knees on his chair, and kept going on about his day. “And then I saw a frog and put it in my pocket and went to show it to the kids down the road, but it jumped out of my pocket before I got there-”

Dad looked up from his paper with a look in his eyes he usually had during the week that made Barnaby shiver on the inside. “Wait, isn’t the family down the road muggles?”

Barnaby sat back and looked away, his hands clenching as they started to sweat. Mum had stopped cutting and looked really worried. Dad got up, and the sound of the chair scraping against the floor almost made Barnaby flinch. He walked to face Barnaby and put his face inches away from his. “Boy, no one under this roof messes around with muggles, do you understand?”

Mum spoke up, her voice calm in spite of the look on her face, “Leave him alone, Edmund.”

“You don’t tell me what to do, Drusilla!” Dad shouted back. He turned back to Barnaby, “Now, have I made myself clear?”

Barnaby should’ve just said yes. But he didn’t want to lie to Dad, and he still wanted to hang out with his friends. He then remembered something he read in his lesson books that he thought might help.

“But I heard that sometimes kids with muggle parents are sometimes still wizards.”

Dad grabbed him by the shirt collar and he knew he said something he shouldn’t have.

“LEES DON’T MESS AROUND WITH MUDBLOODS” Dad shouted, spit getting into Barnaby’s face and Dad shaking him on the last word.

“Your, father, a Lee, was a mudblood!”

Barnaby and Dad both turned their heads to look at Mum. Dad let Barnaby fall to the ground and walked over to Mum. He lifted his hand and smacked Mum across the face; a sickening crack was soon to follow.

Mum stared Dad dead in the eye. It was then that Barnaby saw the red mark on her cheek. She continued to stare at him as she walked over to Barnaby and only broke concentration to help him up. She then kneeled to face Barnaby, gripping his arms but smiling and speaking softly as she said, “Sweetheart, go to your room. Dad and I want to talk privately.”

Barnaby wanted to stay because he didn’t want to Mum get hit again. But like always, he saw the pleading look in her eyes and reluctantly obeyed. He left, taking one last look at his mother, and walked down the short hallway outside the kitchen. He went into his room and left the door open so he could hear and stop Dad if he started hurting Mum.

He sat on his bed and waited. It felt like hours before either of them spoke. He almost went up and got his teddy bear to play with when he heard Mum say, “You really want to hit me while I’m holding a knife?”

He could almost hear the smirk on Dad’s face when he said, “Why don’t you use it then? It’s still on the cutting board.”

“You think I won’t?”

“No, not really. You haven’t killed me yet.” Dad said. “I’m kind of disappointed, really. I thought marrying someone from a family as militantly pureblood as yours, you’d be a little more ruthless. You were a little dictator in school, after all.”

“I will_ never _ be like them. I already wasted my entire childhood trying to please them.” Mum said, “You, however, might as well have married my mother with how often you try to please her.”

“Hey, she’s more family than my brother. He still thinks she ordered those Death Eaters to kill Dad and says I’m disloyal son for even talking to his killer.”

“Edmund,” Mum’s voice was suddenly soft, “You know Cecil’s right. How else could they have known where he was when the only wizards he was still in contact with were you two?”

Barnaby heard Dad slam his fists on the table. “Pomponia didn’t kill my dad!”

Barnaby had only seen his grandmother during Christmas dinners, but he believed his mother. Grandmother (he called her Grandmother because she hit him across the knees with her cane when he called her Grandmum and said he was being disrespectful) lived in a big scary mansion with dark artefacts and dead animals stuffed and hung on the walls and portraits of mean relatives who glared and yelled at him. The only thing scarier than that mansion was Grandmother herself. She looked like the evil stepmothers in the muggle fairy tale books his friends had with her pointy chin and sharp cheeks and bony fingers and her black dress and the tight bun she kept her hair in. She walked around with a cane and seemed to use any excuse to hit people with it. Barnaby knew he wasn’t the only one afraid of her. Mum always looked like she was more afraid of her than Dad, who laughed and joked with Grandmother but flinched whenever he heard her cane.

Barnaby moved closer to the doorway. A lot of times Dad hit Mum soon after slamming his fists on something.

Mum’s voice stayed calm. “I know that woman better than you-”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU GODDAAMN SLUT!” Barnaby felt that in the floorboards.

Usually when Dad told Mum to shut up and called her a mean name (and ‘slut’ definitely sounded like a mean name) they started shouting at each other until Dad hit Mum. Barnaby braced himself.

Only that didn’t happened. Instead, Mum started crying and said, “Don’t call me that. You know how I feel….ever since….”

Barnaby got real scared now. He never heard Mum cry before. Usually when he cried after Dad yelled at him Barnaby just got hit. He leaned forward, ready to run to the kitchen.

Dad spoke, but his voice was unusually soft. “Hey, don’t cry….I’m sorry, Dru, I didn’t mean to remind you of that bastard.”

Mum continued to cry, and every sob gave Barnaby a bad feeling in his stomach. He didn’t know who that bastard was, but he hated him.

After what felt like forever, Mum sobbed became quieter and eventually stopped. “You’re cooking dinner” she finally said, “I’ll go get Barnaby so we can have dinner and pretend like we’re a normal family.”

Barnaby heard her footsteps and quickly scurried back to his bed. When Mum got to his room, she looked at him and then ran to hug him. He didn’t realize until he felt her dress getting wet that he had been crying.


End file.
